Do Fragile Countries Experience Worse MDG Progress?

While it is regularly stated that development progress in so-called fragile states is lagging behind, only very limited empirical analysis exists that investigates to what extent the levels and trends in achievements in MDG indicators differ between fragile and other developing countries, and between different definitions of fragile states. We analyse levels of MDG indicators and progress towards achieving the MDGs between 1990 and 2008 of fragile and non-fragile countries. We focus particularly on the widely used World Bank approach to define fragility, but also compare it with other definitions. We show that fragile countries are, indeed, performing worse in terms of achievement levels of MDG indicators. However, progress in these measures is, on average, not slower in fragile states using most definitions of fragility, and highly heterogeneous among the both fragile and non-fragile countries; only if fragility is defined very narrowly do we see lower progress towards the MDGs. As a result, we suggest that current definitions of fragility are not useful aggregations to predict, monitor and explain development progress using MDG indicators.